


We Could Be

by perhapsaperson



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Daniel has adhd because I said so, F/M, Friendship, Gen, I probably project not Daniel a lot but what else is new, Multi, Slice of Life, also pretty much everyone is bi, also the Sam/Jack is pre-relationship/implied and mostly in the background, normal university related angst, the kids having existential crises and being uncertain about the futur, there's basically no plot just loosely-connected scenes of friendship and self-reflection, this is mostly just gen/friendship stuff, this is probably super cheesy just a warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2020-10-19 10:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20655371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perhapsaperson/pseuds/perhapsaperson
Summary: Moving on to a new stage in life is always an experience of duality: of hope and fear, of excitement and dread. Best case scenario, in Daniel's mind: he finds some sort of purpose in life. Worst case scenario, he gets lost or stuck and can't ever find his way out.What he actually finds, completely unexpectedly, is family.





	1. Daniel 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, if you can't tell, this was partly written just because I'm a university student and I have a lot of Thoughts. I actually had a lot of fun writing it though. I love these kids and their friendship.

Daniel glances one last time around the room that’s been his home for the last seven years. His bags, finally packed, sit in a pile by the door. For the most part, it looks the same as it always has. He’d taken down his favourite poster, depicting the great pyramids, and a few books were gone from his shelves, to take with him to college.

The only big difference is how clean it is. In preparation to leave, he picked up every piece of clothing tossed on the furniture, every book splayed out on the floor, even the papers spread chaotically across his desk. It hadn’t been this clean since the day he moved in when he was 11 years old.

It doesn’t feel right, somehow. It doesn’t feel lived in, it doesn’t feel like his.  
Though, that’s probably apt. It isn’t really his room anymore, or at least it won’t be for long. In a few minutes, Jack will be here to drive Daniel to the bus station, and that’ll be it. He’ll be gone. 

Daniel feels a weird mess of emotions in that moment. Truthfully, he’d never felt especially at home here, but it was still something. It was familiar, comforting. He had a place here, in this house, in this town, and he doesn’t relish the thought of starting over someplace new.

On the other hand, he’s a little excited. He has this kind of restless energy in him, pounding against his chest, the need to make sure he doesn’t end up staying in this same place forever. Like this place wasn’t home, and he didn’t really want it to be. 

Someone knocks at the door, interrupting his thoughts. 

“Daniel?” His grandfather appears at his doorway. “Your friend’s here. You ready?”

Daniel nods, and goes to collect his bags. Nick picks up the biggest one and goes off ahead of him.

“Thanks,” Daniel mumbles belatedly, following him outside.

“Danny boy!” Jack greets them with his usual exaggerated enthusiasm, hopping out of the car to help them load Daniel’s things. 

Once they’re done, Daniel turns to his grandfather. 

“So um… I guess this is goodbye,” his says with a soft smile.

“Yeah. I’ll see you… next time you’re in town.” There’s a beat of silence, then his grandfather pulls him in for an awkward hug. “Good luck out there Daniel.”

Daniel is taken slightly off guard by the level of sincerity of his voice. 

“Thanks, Nick.” They pull apart, and his grandpa gives him a final nod before turning back towards the house.

Daniel gets into the car, feeling slightly off-balance.

“So,” Jack says as he pulls out of Daniel’s driveway. “How’re you feeling? Excited yet?”

“Felling a lot of things,” Daniel says cheerfully. “Excitement, anxiety, deep existential dread…”

“Atta boy, Daniel,” Jack smiles, slapping his back.

Daniel fidgets and stares out the window, trying to stop himself from blurting out every thought running through his head, which has been going a mile a mile a minute since he got into the car. He does not succeed.

“It’s just, I remember when I was a kid how we used to move around all the time. That was really hard, starting in a new place, making new friends. And now, I’ve had you guys since, like, middle school? And I’ve gotten used to it, it’s… stable.”

He pauses for a moment, wringing his hands. “And now, I have to start over again in a whole new city. I man, how do you even -” Daniel cuts himself off and sighs deeply. 

“Hey, it won’t be totally new,” Jack turns to him with a goofy grin. “I’ll be there!”

“I know.”

“I know you’ll figure it out. You managed to make friends with all of us, you can do it again.”

“If you remember, you did most of the work.”

Jack shrugs. “Well, you can always use me to introduce you to people.”

Daniel perks up a bit. “That’s true.”

“Anyway, I’m sure there’ll be lots of other nerds there who’ll love to hear about… languages.”

Daniel smiles a little, more at Jack’s tone than what he actually said. “Yeah, maybe.” 

He stares out the window, trying to burn the familiar streets into his memory, as if it would offer him some comfort. He watches the mountains standing tall above the town. Scenery flashed by, but the mountains stayed put, ever-present in the distance.

They’re at the bus station soon enough, Jack climbs out to help him with his bags again.

Once everything’s loaded, he turns to Daniel again.

“I guess I’ll see you in, what, eight hours?”

Daniel nods. “Something like that.” Jack would be driving up with his parents, who were coming to help him move in and get settled. He’d offered to drive Daniel with them, but Daniel knew there would never be room with all of their combined belongings. So he was taking the bus.  


Jack pats his shoulder reassuringly before climbing back into his car. 

Daniel takes a seat on the bus. As they start driving, he tracks the familiarity of the roads they go. This is the way out of town if you were going north, that’s the road that they’d taken when Jack brought him on a ski trip with his family 9th grade. Soon they’re on a highway that was completely unfamiliar. 

Daniel puts on his headphones and stares out the window.

\- - -

The dorms are about what Daniel expected, but somehow being there physically makes it way more depressing. 

It’s a small, single room, shared by two people. There’s a bed against either wall, and the room is small enough that Daniel can lie on his bed, reach out, and touch his roommate’s. Daniel figures the best thing to do is to spend as little time here as possible.

His roommate seems nice, at least. He’d introduced himself as Paul Davis. They had a short conversation (Where are you from, what are you studying, the usual), but after unpacking a few things Paul had left to meet some friends.

Daniel had planned on unpacking his things right away, but after looking at the pile of luggage sitting in the corner, he got immediately overwhelmed and instead dug out the book he had been reading, deciding to take a pre-emptive break.

He’s startled out of his reading some time later by a knock on the door. He opens it to find Jack, grinning, holding a pizza.

“Hey,” he says. “I thought you might not have eaten yet, so,” he gestures to the box.

“Oh, ” Daniel steps aside to let him in. “Wait, what-” he pulls out his phone to check the time. It’s nearly 10:30. “Crap.” The day is almost over and he hasn’t even started unpacking. He’s sure that’s a good sign for his impending adulthood.

“Here, sit,” Daniel gesture to the bed. “There’s more room.”

They eat sitting cross-legged on Daniel’s bed, with the pizza box between them. They talk nonstop about everything they can think of, their dorms and the campus and the coming classes, about the new show Jack was watching and that book Daniel just finished.

It’s all so familiar and easy that it relieves some of the tension that’s been living in Daniel’s chest since he left home.

“I see you haven’t done much unpacking,” Jack says sometime after they’re finished eating.

Daniel smiles sheepishly. “Got a little distracted.” Suddenly something occurs to him. “Oh, wait,” he says climbing over the bed to dig through one of his bags.

“Here,” he says, once he’s located the object of interest. He’d been a little worried it would be damaged in transit, but the casing seems to have protected it. He pulls his poster out and climbs up onto his bed to tape it to the wall.

“There we go,” he says once he’s satisfied with it, and hops down from the bed. “Now I’ve got the important stuff unpacked.”

He stares critically at the wall. He likes how the poster looks there. It makes the otherwise dreary dorm look more alive, like it’s really his.

“What do you think?” He asks, smirking at Jack.

“That this is exactly what I would’ve expected from you,” Jack says, his tone admonishing, but with a fond look in his eye.

It’s not so bad here, Daniel thinks.  
\- - - 

The next few days go by in a blur. Daniel slowly unpacks (most of) his things - he did at least manage to dig out some bed sheets and a toothbrush on the first night, - over several days. 

Then there’s orientation, buying supplies and textbooks (extortionately expensive, in Daniel’s opinion), and a million other things, and soon it’s the first day of class.

Time is going by spitefully fast now that he has something to worry about, and Daniel does not appreciate it.

On his first day, Daniel walks into his first class full of uncertainty. He’d found the room the day before and checked the time on his schedule twice, but he still feels slightly anxious until he sees “anthropology 104” written across the projector screen. At least he knows he’s in the right place.

The class seems interesting, though a lot of the material is already familiar. His second class, linguistics, also seems interesting if rudimentary, but his chemistry class does not look promising.

By the end of the day, he’s feeling a little less worried. So far, at least, everything they’d gone over in class seemed manageable. 

He makes his way out to the courtyard in front of the science building, where he’d agreed to meet Jack.

He scans the crowd until he catches sight of his friend, who’s occupied talking with someone else. The other man is dark skinned, taller than Jack and much more muscular.  
Jack notices Daniel and waves him over enthusiastically. 

“Daniel, this is Teal’c,” Jack says when Daniel reaches them. “I met him at orientation. He’s cool.” Teal’c nods at Daniel.

“Hi,” Daniel smiles at him. “Daniel Jackson.”

“It is good to meet you, Daniel Jackson,” he says, with a very faint accent that Daniel can’t quite place.

Jack turns to Daniel. “We were gonna go back to my place and watch Star Wars. Wanna come?”

“Sure,” says Daniel.

On the way there, he learns that Teal’c’s a first year in architecture, that he’s an International student, and that he’s about two years older than Daniel, and that he’d been delayed from starting university by mandatory military service. 

Once they arrive, Jack lets them into his room and goes to find his laptop.

“Wow, your place is way nicer than mine,” says Daniel, by which he means it’s slightly bigger and more well-lit.

Jack, as far as Daniel knows, has 3 roommates, but they each get their own bedroom, and they share a bathroom as well as a kitchen and living room, albeit small ones.

“Well, you know…” Jack wanders back in with his laptop in hand. “So how are classes going?”

“Eh, you know,” Daniel says, shrugging. “I mean, we’re getting a lot of homework, but it’s pretty much what I expected.”

Daniel turns to Teal’c. “How are you liking it? I heard architecture’s pretty rough.”

Teal’c seems to consider his answer for a moment. “Some classes are quite difficult.”

Daniel smiles sympathetically. “Do you like some of it, at least?”

Teal’c smiles faintly. “The subject is very interesting.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better, my classes have been good so far,” Jack cuts in cheerfully. Daniel shoots him an irritated look.

“Of course they are, education major,” Daniel says with mock derision. 

Jack scoffs, looking affronted. “Excuse me, my program is plenty difficult.”

“Oh please, you picked half your classes by looking up GPA boosters on reddit,” Daniel says, falling down onto Jack’s bed, taking up as much space as possible.

Jack opens his mouth as if to argue, but instead he just shrugs and shoves Daniel aside, sitting next to him on the bed.

“C’mon,” he says, gesturing Teal’c to the space next to him. “We’ve got a movie to watch.”

\- - -

By the time Daniel arrives at his chemistry lab on Tuesday of his second week, he’s pretty sick of chemistry. 

He sits near the front, at an empty bench. He starts reading over the instructions in his lab manual, when someone takes the seat next to him.

“Hi,” she smiles at him. She has short blond hair and a determined set to her face. “I’m Sam, I guess we’re gonna be lab partners.”

“Daniel, ” he says, turning to face her properly. “And I hope you know what you’re doing, because chemistry is not my subject.”

She laughs, and Daniel laughs with her. “I’m sure we’ll manage.”

They do manage to make it through the experiment without any major mistakes, but they mess up on a filtration and end up being the last ones done.

“So,” Sam says as they’re leaving the lab together. “Wanna meet up tomorrow to work on the lab report together?”

“Sure,” Daniel says.

They actually end up working really well together, and despite neither of them being especially talented in chemistry, they do really well on the lab.

They start meeting up a few times a week to work on chemistry, bonding over their lust for knowledge (or nerdiness, as Jack would call it) and mutual hatred of chemistry.

“And I get that they want us to have hands on experience,” Sam says as they’re walking back to their dorms one day in late September (it turned out that they lived in the same building, though on different floors). “But what do we gain from spending 20 minutes sitting around waiting for some dumb liquid to boil?”

“I think they’re just stealthily trying to teach you patience.”

Sam scoffs. “I’m patient enough.”

Daniel raises his eyebrows.

“Shut up, I can be patient,” she says playfully shoving his shoulder. “I just don’t like wasting my time on pointless details.”

Daniel laughs as they walk up to their building.

“So see you Tuesday?” Sam asks, jerking her hand down the hall towards her room.

“Hey, actually-” Daniel hesitates for a moment - “I’m going out with some friends, wanna come?”

“What, now?” She asks. Daniel nods.

She looks uncertain. “I don’t know, I have homework I should do.”

Daniel waves his hand dismissively. “It can wait. You’re pretty on top of things anyway.”

Sam pauses for a moment, considering. “You know what? Sure,” she says, smiling slightly. “Sounds fun.”

After they drop off their bags in their respective rooms, Daniel leads her to Jack’s place, both of them complaining about chemistry on they way.

Jack gives him a mildly surprised look as they approach. “Daniel,” he says, tilting his head. “Who’s this?”

“Jack, Teal’c, this is Sam, my lab partner.”

Jack grimaces theatrically. “Another science student? I’m surrounded by nerds.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “And what are you?”

“I’m studying education.”

“And you’re not a nerd?”

“Nope, absolutely not."

Sam looks skeptical. “If you look like a nerd and hang out with nerds, I think that makes you a nerd.”

Jack narrows his eyes, but Sam just grins in response. Daniel suppresses a laugh.

“I’m not sure I like this,” Jack mumbles.

Daniel rolls his eyes. “Come on, we don’t have all night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, I hope y'all enjoyed that. Honestly though I half feel like this fanfic would be really boring to anyone who's not me, but whatever, I enjoyed writing it.


	2. Cam 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cam makes an interesting new friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! So, new chapter. This took a little longer than I thought it would, but editing is hard y'all. The next one should theoretically be out a little quicker, but we'll see

Upon reflection, Cam really should’ve known better than to end up here tonight.

After the whole ordeal of moving across the country to start university, he’d been a little worried that he’d have trouble meeting new people. He’d been worried about a lot of things, actually, but this particular fear turned out to be unnecessary, as it turned out the first year dorms were actually very conducive to making friends. 

Between orientation and all the “getting to know each other” activities they’d been forced into, he’d managed to form a few loose friendships before classes had even started.

It was actually a pretty nice setup. If you felt like talking to someone at any given time, all you had to do was hang around the lounge shared by the floor, and if you felt like being alone all you needed to do was retreat to your room.

Cam, who quite liked talking to people, spent a lot of his time outside. This was, in hindsight, where his problems began.

Things seemed to be going well at first. He’d had the chance to talk to plenty of people, and some of them had even introduced him to extracurriculars that he quite enjoyed.

However, there was one confounding variable, and that was Vala Mal-Doran.

Vala also lives on his floor and is something of an explosive personality. She’s intense, very much a presence in any room she’s in, and has a hedonistic streak that manifests mainly in frequent partying and a general distaste for most of her schoolwork.

Vala had, despite being wildly popular in their dorm, quickly decided that for some reason, Cam was the most interesting person there.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Vala, because he did. It was just that she had a tendency to drag him into… questionable situations. And Cam, getting easily swept up in her enthusiasm, had a hard time saying no.

Which led him to his current situation.

Him and Vala, ducked behind a dumpster in an alley next to the club they’d just hurried out of. Cam was pretty drunk at this point, and was having a bit of trouble thinking straight.

He hadn’t planned on going out at all tonight, but Vala wanted to take him to some hot new club. She’d made it sound amazing, and he ended up being persuaded, though right now he was having trouble remembering why. 

He had to admit, he was actually having a good time, but at some point there’d been some sort of commotion in the next room. Before he could begin to figure out what it was, Vala appeared, told him they needed to leave, and dragged him out here. 

“So… are you gonna tell me whats going on?” He asks.

“Shhh!” She hisses, shoving him lightly. She looks out towards the street, and now Cam can hear the sound or sirens approaching. He feels a rush of panic.

“Is that the police?” He whispers frantically.

“Yeah, but it’s fine, don’t worry.” She looks confident, but it somehow it doesn’t make him feel any better.

The police sound like they’ve stopped nearby, and he hears something happening near the building.

“Seriously Vala-”

“Shush!”

After a moment, the sound seems to recede a little. Vala glances around the dumpster.

“Come on,” she whispers, pulling Cam to his feet. “Let’s go! run!” She shoves him forward.

“We’re running?” He whisper shouts, but she’s already far ahead of him and he has no choice but to follow her. 

They take off, sprinting through the night, Cam following Vala across streets and throughout several back alleys until he has absolutely no idea where they are anymore. They finally stop, breathless, and lean agains the cement wall of a very sketchy looking building.

“So,” says Cam between breaths, “Are you gonna tell me - what’s going on?”

Vala looks sheepish. “Well, so that club we went to? Some of the activities going on in there weren’t, strictly speaking, technically legal.”

Cam gaped at her. “Are you kidding me.”

“Oh relax, it was nothing serious. At least, it wasn’t until that idiot Jason decided to start a fight with Marcus when he couldn’t stand losing, I think someone got lightly stabbed, and I guess somebody else thought it was a good idea to call the police …”

Cam stares. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”

“Well, the important thing is that we’re here now, and we’re all perfectly fine.”

Cam leans his head back against the wall, rubbing his eyes. “One of these days you’re gonna get me killed.”

“Oh don’t be so dramatic, Cameron, it was just a little police chase.”

He turns to look at her. “Why am I even friends with you?”

She turns to him with a cheeky grin. “Because I bring some excitement to your otherwise dull and meaningless life life?”

Cam scoffs, but he can’t exactly argue.

\- - -

Today, Cam thinks, is really not his day. 

It’s mid-October, and the early afternoon sun is pouring into his room despite his closed curtains. The glare does nothing to improve his mood.

The day started out pretty well. He got some studying done in the morning, had a nice lunch, then broke up with his girlfriend over Skype.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t expected this to happen eventually. Him and Felicia had started dating during their senior year, and decided that they wanted to try long distance when they went away to different colleges.

Cam could tell it wasn’t working, he could feel them growing more distant as the weeks went by. It was inevitable that they’d break up.

None of that makes hearing it any easier.

So, feeling miserable and self-pitying, Cam decided he’d spend the rest of the day in his room sulking. So far, he’s been lying in bed listening to sad music, uninterrupted, for about two hours.

He’s interrupted when Vala barges into his room sits casually on his bed, cheerful as ever. Cam mentally curses himself for not locking the door, though he’s pretty sure a locked door never would’ve stopped Vala anyway.

“Cam, you’ll never believe what-” she cuts herself off, noticing his despondent state. “What’s up with you?”

Cam stares at the wall. “Honestly, I am not in the mood.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks, her tone light.

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“You sure?” She asks. “People say that helps.”

“Vala, if you don’t mind, I’d rather be left alone right now.”

Vala holds up her hands, placating. “Alright.” She stands up and walks to his door. “If you wanna talk, I’ll be… somewhere.”

After she leaves, Cam takes advantage of his solitude to mope and wallow in self pity some more. 

He tries to do some homework, but keeps getting distracted. He opens twitter and scrolls aimlessly for a while, not absorbing anything he sees. He stares out the window and sulks.

Eventually, by early evening, he’s hungry enough to leave his room to get some food. As he’s heading back to his room with a cup of microwaved noodles, Vala emerges out of nowhere and grabs his arm.

“Hey,” he says, almost spilling hot water from the cup onto his hand.

“You need to get out of here,” she says. “Come on.” She starts to pull him towards the stairwell. 

Cam resists. “Vala, no offence, but I’m not in the mood to go out partying, or whatever it is you do every night.”

Vala rolls her eyes. “That’s not where we’re going.”

Cam gives her a severe look, trying to communicate that he doesn’t want to go anywhere.

Vala meets his gaze, and Cam is a bit surprised at the sincerity in her expression. 

“Come on, Cam, you’ll like this. Trust me.”

A large part of him wants to go back to his room and sulk some more, but another finds something about her earnest tone compelling.

“What about my noodles?” It’s Cam’s last, feeble attempt at resistance.

“On the way,” Vala says. Her tone carries just a hint of smugness, and Cam can tell that she knows she’s won.

“Fine,” he says finally, “But I’m not changing.”

Vala grins delightedly.

He grumpily slurps his noodles from the cup while they ride the elevator down.

As they step outside, he breaths in the cool evening air. If he’s being totally honest with himself, the change in scenery is already helping to lift his spirits, but he certainly won’t admit that to Vala.

They walk for longer than he expected, Vala leading him through buildings and alleys until he has no idea where they are, even though he can tell they’re definitely still on campus.

“Where are we going?” Cam asks, already feeling drained.

“Almost there.”

They walk a while longer, and just as Cam’s starting to seriously consider shutting down this whole pointless exercise, Vala stops.

“Here we are,” she says, opening the door for him. Cam steps forward, but stops short when he sees the room.

“What’s this?”

Vala grins at him. “Art class,” she says simply.

Cam is floored. He does remember mentioning that he sometimes painted with his mom as a kid, that art was one way he dealt with stress. But he never expected Vala to remember, much less put it to use.

Cam looks around the room. It does look like an art room, though whatever’s going on isn’t very structured.

There are people milling about, talking enthusiastically. Most are painting, though some sketching with pencils, seemingly doing whatever they want. There were a couple of others walking around offering advice, teachers maybe. It honestly looks like a lot of fun.

Despite his love of art, Cam lingers by the door for a moment, feeling a bit awkward and unsure where to start. This is quickly solved when Vala takes his arm and pulls him inside.

“Come on,” she says, leading him to a table with fresh supplies.

At first, Cam is reluctant, some part of him determined to keep feeling miserable. But, as he paints, he finds his frustration and sadness starting to melt away, as they often do when he paints.

As the night goes on, he finds himself talking to the other people in the class, who are open and friendly with him. 

Vala, sitting to his right, makes a valiant attempt at drawing, which is clearly not her thing. She frequently growing frustrated with her attempts and tosses them aside to start over, which Cam finds kind of funny and kind of endearing.

As he and Vala walk back to their dorm, the atmosphere is lighter.

“Hey,” Cam says, then pauses for a moment, trying to find the right words. “Thanks… for everything,” is all he manages to come up with.

Vala just smiles at him. “It was nothing.”

\- - -

Cam wanders around the floor, exhausted. It’s early afternoon on a cloudy Sunday in early November, and Cam is deep into studying for his midterms. So far, he’s not having the best time.

He had, in fact, been studying statistics for so long that his brain had stopped working, so he’d decided he needed a break. Now he’s taking a walk around the building, trying to get his mind off statistics, for a few minutes at least.

As he walks into the common room, he stops short. Vala’s there, sitting at the table with her head down against her folded arms.

For a moment, Cam’s not sure what to do. He considers just quietly turning around and leaving, maybe she wants to be left alone.

He brushes that idea aside. “Hey,” he says softly, coming up beside her. “You okay?”

She glances up at him, looking exhausted.

“Yeah, fine,” she says unconvincingly.

“Are you sure?” Cam asks. “You don’t seem fine.”

She turns to look at him properly, now annoyed. “Cameron, I’m fine,” she snaps. “And, no offence but I’m really not in the mood to socialize right now. So, if you’d just leave me alone, that’d be great.”

Cam holds his hands up. “Alright, I’ll go. But, if you need to talk, you know…” he trails off.

Vala nods absently. 

As he leaves, he feels odd He’s never seen Vala upset like this before, she was never usually so open with her emotions. At least, not with the negative ones.

He also feels a bit guilty. Vala always found a way to make him feel better when he was upset, he should’ve been able to do the same for her. He’s just not sure what to do.

He wanders around a while more, trying to come up with a good way to offer comfort. An idea strikes him as he walks past the communal kitchen.

It seems so obvious, now that he thinks about it. At home with his family, they’d always cooked for each other as a way of showing affection. Whenever he was trying to pick someone up, show appreciation, or just do something nice for his family, he’d bake for them. He hasn’t really done any cooking since starting college, but this is as good a reason as any to start up again.

Of course, he doesn’t have most of the ingredients he needs, so first he slips out to the grocery store to pick them up.

He spends the next few hours in the kitchen, blending, beating, piping. In the months he’s been here, he forgot how much he enjoyed cooking.

Finally, he pulls a tray of freshly baked macaroons out of the oven. He’d made them in green and purple, colours that Vala seemed to like (at least, based on the decorating in her room).

Soon afterwards, he’s knocking at her door, plate of cookies in hand. When she opens the door, she looks surprised to see him.

Cam smiles. “I brought macaroons,” he says, lifting the plate. “My grandma’s recipe.”

Vala looks at him wearily. “I don’t really feel like talking right now-”

“No talking,” Cam says. “Just cookies. According to my grandma, these will cure whatever ails you. Of course, she also thought that ginger tea would cure your pneumonia, so take that with a grain of salt.”

Vala smiles a little at that, and Cam counts that as a victory. She steps aside and lets him in, gesturing for him to sit down on her bed.

Vala sits next to him and takes one of the macaroons. As soon as the takes a bite, her whole face changes.

“Cameron,” she says seriously. “This is amazing.” She quickly finishes the cookie and grabs another.

Cam grins. “What can I say, grandma really knows her macaroons.”

They share an amicable silence as they eat more of Cam’s cookies.

“Look,” Cam says some time later, his voice soft. “It’s okay if you don’t wanna tell me what’s going on with you. But…” he trails off, feeling a bit awkward, trying to find the right words.

“I just wanna say… You don’t have to be alone. I’ll be here with cookies or whatever else you need.”

Vala stares down at her hands for a moment. “Thanks, Cam,” she almost whispers.

“No problem.”

After a beat, Vala speaks up again. “Hey, wanna watch something?” She asks, closer to her normal cheery tone, reaching for her laptop.

“I’m not sure I trust you to choose a movie, but sure,” says Cam.

“Oh please, just because you don’t have any taste,” she rolls her eyes.

They end up watching Legally Blonde, again. Cam loves it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, we've got some new characters in the mix. This was fun, I really love Cam and Vala's friendship in the show.


	3. Sam 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang suffers through midterms, and celebrates thanksgiving

Sam stares down at the textbook in front of her, trying very hard to keep reading, but she’s been looking at this page so long the numbers are swimming before her eyes.

“Oh god,” she moans, falling forward to lay her head on the table. “I’m never gonna get through all this.”

Janet pats her arm sympathetically from across the table. It’s mid November, and their first round of midterms is fast approaching. It’s not going well. Sam’s math classes are kicking her ass, and Janet, as a pre-med student, could definitely empathize with her stress. 

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Janet says.

Sam looks up from where her head had been buried in her arms. Janet had two textbooks and several notebooks spread out in front of her. Jack, who was allegedly studying with them, had a single notebook, and was currently occupied trying to balance a pencil on his finger.

Sam sighs again. “It’s just - it’s so -” she sighs loudly rather than continuing.

“I thought you liked this stuff,” Jack says idly, still playing with the pencil. “Math, and physics and all that.”

“I do,” she says defensively. “Just - not this class.”

Over the last few months, she and Jack, Daniel, and Teal’c had developed a pretty close friendship. They were either going out together, hanging out at each others dorms, (she was pretty sure Daniel’s roomate knew all of them by name), or “studying” together. The study sessions were rarely productive, especially when Jack was there.

Sam makes one last attempt to refocus on her linear algebra review, but she’s been working so long that her brain is refusing to absorb information. She snaps her textbook shut.

“You know what, I’ve had enough for today. You guys wanna go?” Sam asks.

Jack looks up from where he was spinning his pencil on the table. “I dunno, I’ve got so much work going on here,” he says, immediately standing up.

Janet seems unconvinced. “I really need to study some more biology.”

“C’mon, Janet,” says Jack. “Take a break. Treat yourself. Let’s -” he swings his arm around to gesture at the door - “get out of here.”

Janet sighs heavily and looks over at her notebook one more time. “Alright,” she says, moving to pack up here materials. “But if I don’t get into med school because of this, it’s on you.”

Jack waves his hand dismissively. “Of course you’ll get in, I have complete faith in you.”

The three of them chat amicably on their way out, pointedly avoiding any mention of exams. They part ways with Janet outside the library building, as she has to take the bus to where she live off campus, and the two of them head back to the dorms together.

“So, see you tomorrow?” Sam asks when they reach her building. 

“Actually,” says Jack, “Wanna go somewhere else?”

Sam frowns, confused. “Like where?”

“I dunno,” he shrugs, “Just, you’ve been so busy with exams you haven’t even left the campus in days.”

She glances down at the time. It’s 9:30.

“Yeah, I could do that. As long as we’re not back too late,” she adds, with a stern expression.

“Great,” he says. “I know just the place.”

\- - -

The place, as it turned out, was an arcade bar a few minutes off campus. Sam has actually heard of the place, though she’s never been there. It’s usually pretty popular among the students, but tonight, it’s pretty sparse, probably because it’s so close to midterms.

“Really?” Sam asks, with a raised eyebrow, when she figures out where they’re going.

“Yes, really,” Jack says. “It’s fun, trust me. You remember what fun is, don’t you?”

Sam punches his shoulder playfully.

When they get in, they each buy drinks (which are ridiculously expensive here, in Sam’s opinion) and move on to the arcade section.

“No, I’m really good, at this one, watch,” Jack says, walking up to a pacman game. He looses the game almost immediately. 

“Oh, let’s see you try then,” he says as Sam laughs at his attempt. She manages to get a bit farther than he did, though really she doesn’t have much experience with arcade games.

“Beginners luck,” Jack says.

They wander around aimlessly for a while, trying games at random (Sam turns out to be quite good at the shooting games). Then Jack spots something in the corner that makes his face light up.

“Oh, we have to try this,” he says, taking her by the arm and leading her in the direction of whatever it was that had him so excited

When she sees the game, she stops. “Oh no,” she says. “No way.”

“Come on,”Jack says. “Who doesn’t like DDR?”

“I suck at dancing.”

“It’s not really dancing.”

“Still,” she insists. “I don’t need everyone seeing how uncoordinated I am.”

“No one will see,” he says. “There’s hardly anyone here.”

Sam’s still uncertain. “It’ll the fun,” he says, stretching out he last word teasingly.

“Alright,” she says, “But just once.”

They end up playing more rounds than she can count. By the time they stop, Sam is physically exhausted, but feels refreshed, more than she had in weeks. 

Since they’re so close to campus, they decide to walk back. The night air is cool, refreshing and welcome.

They talk the whole way back, both of them full of renewed energy. 

“Hey Jack,” She says as he walks her up to the entrance to her building. “Thanks.”

He grins at her. “It was nothing. You gotta remember to have fun once in a while.”

Sam smiles. “I’ll try.”

That night, Sam falls asleep easily, feeling lighter than she had in a long time.

\- - -

Sam shivers slightly as a gust of wind rushes past her and her companions. It’s a cloudy, mid-November morning. There’s a light dusting of frost in the grass, but it’s not too cold now that the sun’s out in full force.

They’ve got a break from classes this week. Jack had driven home to see his family, leaving her, Daniel and Teal’c alone. 

The three of them had been sitting around bored earlier, and Daniel had, for some reason, decided they should go to the zoo. It’s pretty empty, probably because of the weather and the fact that it’s 10am on a random Tuesday. 

They’re currently standing at the polar bear exhibit and, despite the chill, eating ice cream cones.

Daniel is staring at the bear, who is swimming around the “water” part of it’s enclosure.

“Do you think it misses the snow?” He asks distractedly.

Sam turns to look at him. He’s wearing an oversized sweater who’s sleeves hang over his hands, his cheeks are pink form the cold, and he’s holding an ice cream cone. All of this combines makes him look rather younger than he was, and Sam suddenly can’t help but laugh at the childish question.

Daniel looks up at her. “What?” He asks, with a vague smile.

“Nothing,” she says, still smiling. “It’ll probably snow soon,” she adds, in response to his question. 

“I bet they’ll like that.” Daniel turns to Teal’c, who’s staring at the animal with enraptured fascination. Sam smiles again.

“Never seen one before?” Daniel asks him. “I mean, in person?”

“I have not,” says Teal’c, not looking away from the bear.

“Bigger than you expect, huh?” Says Sam.

“Indeed.”

“A lot of things are,” Daniel says matter of factly, back to starting at the bears. “I remember the first time I saw a pig in person. Unreal.”

“Yeah?” Sam asks “How old were you.”

Daniel thinks about it for a moment. “I must’ve been like 12?”

Sam raises her eyebrows. “You didn’t know how big pigs were till you were 12?” She asks teasingly.

Daniel shrugs. “City boy, I guess. I remember Jack took me out to see his uncle’s farm, that was the first time I saw a lot of things.” He pulls a weird face at the last part.

“What sort of things?” Teal’c asks.

“Oh, like, we saw some calves being born. It was… interesting.”

Sam can’t help laughing at the image of an unsuspecting 12 year old Daniel witnessing the miracle of cow birth for the first time.

“So you and Jack have known each other a long time,” Sam says after a moment.

“Oh yeah,” says Daniel.

“I mean, I knew you went to high school together, but I guess it goes back further than that?”

Daniel nods, his expression distant. “We were like, 11, I was new at his school. Actually we, uh, we did not get along at first,” he says with a smile.

“Oh yeah, I can see that,” Sam says. Daniel grins.

“I was a little antisocial at that age, and he was very loud and outgoing, which I found kind of annoying at the time. He also thought I was boring at first.”

“So what happened?”

Daniel thinks for a moment. “I dunno. I guess we just grew on each other.”

He stays quiet for a moment, as if lost in thought, then turns abruptly to Teal’c. “How about you?” He asks. “Did you see a lot of farm animals as a kid?”

“No,” Teal’c says simply. “We also did not have a zoo in the city I grew up in.”

“Oh, neither did I,” Daniel says. “I’ve only been when we were on vacation. I actually don’t think I’ve been to a zoo since I was a kid.”

Sam smiles teasingly. “Is that why you wanted to come here? To relive your childhood?” 

“I just like looking at the animals,” he says, mock defensive.

“You are such a child.”

Daniel shrugs. “Embracing your inner child, the only way to survive the horrors of adulthood,” he says.

“Drama queen.”

“Daniel Jackson is right,” Teal’c says, surprising both of them. “It is indeed, ‘the worst’.” 

Sam and Daniel can’t help grinning at the awkward way Teal’c uses the phrase. Sam guessed he was picking it up more slang from Jack.

“There you go, Teal’c agrees with me, and as we all know he’d the wisest among us,” Daniel says with a hint of smugness.

“Nah, I don’t buy it,” says Sam, turning to point at Teal’c. “You just fool everyone with that stoic exterior. Deep down, you’re just as dumb as the rest of us.”

Teal’c raises an eyebrow at his, but doesn’t say anything. 

“Oh, let’s go see the penguins next,” Daniel says, noticing the sign. 

Teal’c looks pleased. “I have never seen a penguin,” he says.

“They’re great, you’ll love them!”

Sam rolls her eyes at his excitement, but deep down she nothing but fondness for he friends.

\- - -

Seeing all the decorations announcing thanksgiving around campus, Sam’s starting to feel a little homesick. So far, that’d never been a problem; she had her friends, she was always busy with school, she was perfectly content.

But the holiday season, predictably, was reminding her too much of home. She wouldn’t be able to go for thanksgiving, because taking a flight only to spend a long weekend there didn’t seem worth it.

In fairness, holidays at home weren’t always the most functional of occasions. All right, really they never were. Her father and brother usually ended up fighting, and she couldn’t help but get sucked in no matter how hard she tried to stay out of it.

Still, ever since her brother moved out to go to college, it’d gotten pretty rare for the whole family to get together, and Sam had found herself looking forward to it. 

It’s more that that though. The holidays were also when she missed her mom the most. She’d always been very enthusiastic about them, and always made sure to include Sam and her brother in all the preparations. When she was younger, some of her favourite days had been spent baking and decorating cookies with them.

Her mother’s absence feels sharper now that she doesn’t have the rest of her family around with her. Despite their fighting, ever since their mom died, her dad spent the holidays with them every year, as if to try and make up for all the times he’d worked through them or been away. He always made an effort, too, serving them a home cooked meal even though he’d never been a good cook. And Mark, not matter how he was fighting with their dad, showed up and at least tried to leave on good terms.

So overall, Sam was feeling morose and a bit lonely, not that she’d ever admit it.

Then one day, out of the blue, when the four of them are sitting around a table at the library, Jack asks “Any of you got any plans for thanksgiving?”

There’s a pause before Daniel answers, barely looking up from his textbook. “Uh, not really, just gonna be around here.” Jack’s face tells her that he already knew that.

“I do not,” Teal’c adds.

Jack turns to her. “Nope,” she says. “I was thinking about cooking something, but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.” Daniel laughs, eyes still fixed on his book.

One thing she learned, through a disastrous attempt at making a birthday cake for Teal’c, is that she, Jack and Daniel couldn’t cook in the slightest. They’d set off the fire alarm twice and the final product was somehow burned on the outside but still runny on the inside. They ended up buying a cake.

Jack looks contemplative for a second. “Wanna get together for thanksgiving?” he asks. “We could do like a potluck. Everyone can bring something.”

Daniel shrugs. “Yeah, sure.” Teal’c simply nods.

“Sound fun,” Sam adds.

“Great,” says Jack, grinning. “I’ll make the turkey.” Teal’c raises an eyebrow and Daniel looks dubious, but no one says anything.

\- - -

Leaving Jack to cook the turkey went about as well as she’d expected. When she enters his dorm at 3pm on thanksgiving Monday, the smoke alarm is going off and she smells something burning.

From the kitchen, she can hear light arguing, what sounds like Jack and Daniel, it reminds her of home.

She quietly makes her way to the kitchen. She was right, Jack’s there trying to clean up his mess, while Daniel is trying to give advice, as if he knows any more about cooking than Jack does.

They’re both hopeless, of course, but between them they’re manager to salvage the turkey, only slightly burned, and nothing’s on fire. Sam considers that a win.

In fairness, she doubts her mashed potatoes faired much better. She’d never really figured out how to get the texture right.

“Sam! Welcome!” Jack says, finally noticing her. “As you can see, this is going swimmingly.” Daniel rolls his eyes and Jack firmly ignores him.

“I’m sure it’ll taste great, Jack,” she says, barely suppressing a laugh.

There’s another knock at the door. “That’ll be Teal’c,” says Jack going to let him in. “He brought pie,” he adds, with exaggerated enthusiasm.

Sam gives Daniel a questioning look, he shrugs in response. Neither of them had yet witnessed Teal’c attempting to cook. So far, he seemed like their best hope.

Teal’c follows Jack into the kitchen, taking in the scene with a raised eyebrow. He has with him a pie that actually looks decent, but she knows looks can be deceiving.

“So,” Sam says. “Shall we?” She gestures to the food.

Jack takes in the mess in the kitchen - the dishes scattered on the counter, one of which is broken, and another which still contains their first attempt at cranberry sauce - and says “How bout we eat in the living room?”

So they arrange their food on the coffee table and settle on the couch. Jack turns on the TV and puts on a basketball game, more as background noise than anything.

And yeah, the turkey is burned, and the mashed potatoes are lumpy, and the stuffing tastes a little off. But the four of them spend the day together, talking passionately and joking and laughing late into the night, and Sam doesn’t feel so homesick anymore. She feels perfectly content here, with them.

And, it turned out, Teal’c’s pie was perfectly adequate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> had fun writing this one, and it was even finished not quite in time for the holidays. In my defence, though, this story is set in Canada and our thanksgiving was all the way back in October, so really it would've been late anyway


	4. Daniel 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang celebrates Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I call this one 'a lot of unnecessary headcannons about Jack and Daniel's childhood'. Also I don't know how to write Teal'c

It’s mid December, and by now anyone walking on campus could tell, from all the decorations and festive lights, that the holiday season was almost at it’s peak. Unfortunately, that also means finals are fast approaching.

Daniel sighs in frustration as he gets yet another chemistry review problem wrong. This really isn’t his subject.

His suffering is mercifully interrupted by a knock at the door. He opens it to find Jack standing outside with Sam and Teal’c.

“Hey,” Jack says cheerfully. “How’s studying?”

“Great,” he deadpans. “I haven’t gotten a single question right in the last half hour.”

Jack nods sympathetically. “We were gonna go get groceries, but if you’re too busy studying -”

“God no,” says Daniel, already grabbing his coat and wallet. “I am ready to take a break.”

So, twenty minutes later, Daniel is standing in a wall mart contemplating whether he should spend his severely limited money on a box of pop tarts, while All I Want For Christmas Is You blares over the speakers.

Sam raises her eyebrows at the box in his hands. “Do you really need that?” She asks skeptically.

Daniel sighs and moves to put the box back on the shelf, when he’s intercepted by Jack.

“Quit being so… responsible,” he says, the last word with dismissive tone. “It’s the holidays, have some fun.” At that, he takes the box from Daniel’s hands and adds it to the cart, which is already well filled with snack foods picked out by Teal’c.

“You know what fun is, don’t you Sam?”

Sam rolls her eyes. “Not during finals, no.”

They all end up spending more money than they originally planned, courtesy of Jack’s influence.

“We should go to that taco place,” Daniel says. There’s a small Mexican restaurant they’d found nearby, and they often went there after grocery shopping.

“I concur,” says Teal’c.

Jack and Sam agree enthusiastically. Once they’re all sitting together at the restaurant, their grocery bags on the floor around them, Jack starts talking about holiday plans again. Daniel can see how excited he is to go home. 

“What are you guys doing?” He asks eventually.

“Well, I’m gonna be going home,” says Sam.

“Toronto, right?” asks Daniel.

Sam smiles and nods. “You guys do anything in particular?” Jack continues.

“Well, usually my dad tries to make a nice dinner, overestimates his abilities, and we end up getting takeout, if that counts,” she says. 

Daniel laughs, and Jack turns to him. 

“Well, obviously you know what I’m doing,” Daniel says.

“Right, you guys are from the same place,” Sam says.

“Yep,” Jack says, grinning. “Danny usually comes over for Christmas. We have a little party at my place.”

Finally, Jack turns to Teal’c. “What about you? You going home?”

“I am not,” He says. At their curious expressions, he elaborates; “It is too far to travel back for the holidays.”

Sam gives him a sympathetic smile. 

“So you’re just gonna be here… by yourself?” Daniel asks.

“No,” says Jack definitively. “You’re coming home with us.”

Teal’c raises an eyebrow. “Are you certain?” He asks. “I understand that this holiday is meant to be spent with family. I would not want to intrude.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Jack says with a dismissive gesture. “You wouldn’t be intruding.”

“Jack’s right,” Daniel jumps in. “We’d love to have you there.” 

Teal’c smiles ever so slightly, and nods. “In that case, it would be my honour to accompany you.”

\- - -

The drive home is a mostly uneventful eight hours. Daniel sits in the front and argues with Jack over the music, then switches places with Teal’c to sit in the back, and argues with Jack over where to stop for food.

Finally, the familiar streets of his hometown come into view. It’s early evening.

It feels almost surreal for a moment, being here again. It looks quite different from the last time Daniel was there, mainly due to the thick blanket of snow that now covered everything in sight.

Still, the familiarity of the place washes over Daniel, a comforting sense of warmth settling in his chest. It almost feels like he never left.

Daniel’s still lost in thought when they pull up to Jack’s place. The house looks the same as it always has, and Daniel feels himself smiling a little at the sight of it.

The three of then gather their bags and ring the doorbell. The door opens to Jack’s parents, both standing in the doorway, grinning.

Jack greets his parents enthusiastically, hugging each of them in turn.

“Hello, Daniel, ” Says Jack’s mom, greeting Daniel warmly as they always have.

“Hi, Mrs O’Neill, Mr. O’Neill, ” Daniel says with a soft smile. He also gets a hug form Jack’s mother, and a pat on the shoulder from his father.

“And you must be Teal’c,” Jack’s mother says, turning to the final member of their group. 

Teal’c inclines his head in greeting to each of them.“Thank you for having me,” he says.

“Oh nonsense, ” she says, grinning. “Any friend of Jack’s is welcome here.”

At this, Jack shuffles a little awkwardly, and Daniel’s lips twitches up in fond amusement at his discomfort.

“Lemme show you your room,” Jack says, his parents moving to help them with their bags. 

Jack leads them upstairs. “This one here’s my room,” he says, gesturing to the first room on the right.“You guys are in the guest room, which is right there.” He points to the room across the hall. “Bathroom’s down at the end of the hall there.”

The tour is, of course, totally unnecessary for Daniel, who’s stayed over many times and knows this house almost as well as his own.

“I’m gonna go put this stuff in my room,” he says, gesturing at his bags. He points down at their bags. “Do you need any help with that?”

“No, I think we’re okay,” says Daniel.

“Indeed,” says Teal’c. “Thank you, Jack.”

Daniel and Teal’c are left alone, and Daniel takes in the guest bedroom. It’s familiar enough, though in honesty most night’s he’d stayed over he’d spent in Jack’s room. 

The room hasn’t changed much since the last time he’d been here. The night after graduation, Jack had brought all their friends over, and they’d all camped out in the guest room. They’d been giggly and happy and high on their momentum, but towards the end there was a hint of melancholy over the room as it really sank in that this part of their lives was coming to an end.

He picks up a picture on the dresser showing Jack as a young child. He ghosts a finger over the glass, remembering how their friends had commented on it then. (“You were so cute” “Damn, what happened?”)

He finally pulls himself from his revelry and picks up his bags. The room had been set up with an air mattress in addition to the usual queen sized bed.

“You can have the bed if you want,” Daniel says. “I don’t mind the air mattress.”

Teal’c frowns. “This bed is easily large enough for both of us. Why is the air mattress necessary?”

“Oh, well,” Daniel stumbles, taken off guard. “A lot of people find it weird to share a bed with their friends. I guess it’s seen as a couples thing.”

Teal’c raises an eyebrow. “Do you?”

Daniel considers this for a moment then shrugs. “Not really, no.” In fact, when he was a bit younger he had regularly shared a bed with Jack.

“Then you would be comfortable if we both slept on the bed?” Teal’c asks.

“Yeah, sure, we could do that.”

They’re about done unpacking when Jack pops into the room to bring them down to dinner.

\- - -

“Good morning, children,” comes Jack’s voice, obnoxiously loud and cheerful. Daniel opens his eyes just enough to give Jack an annoyed look at being woken up this early. Jack is, unfortunately, undeterred.

“Rise and shine, holiday activities await,” he says excitedly, stepping up to the bed. Daniel looks up at where he stands, slightly out of focus, and can’t help a hint of amusement. Jack is now wearing a Santa hat, and an alarmingly bright Christmas sweater.

Of course, he doesn’t show his amusement, making sure to keep Jack fixed with an unimpressed look. Jack rolls his eyes.

“Come on, don’t be such a baby. You know you wanna get up.” Daniel sighs in defeat and sits up, reaching for his glasses. 

“Atta boy,” Jack grins, for which Daniel gives him a renewed glare. “Now go get ready and we’ll all go downstairs!”

When Daniel comes out of the bathroom, rubbing a towel against his still-wet hair, he hears Jack’s voice from down the hall.

“No, see, it’s a tradition,” Jack says. “They’re Christmas sweaters, supposed to be ugly. It’s fun!”

Daniel steps into Jack’s room to see Teal’c staring down, curiously, at the sweater he’s now wearing. It’s covered in snowflakes and large reindeer. He also wears a pair of novelty, light up antlers on his head. The sight is so ridiculous Daniel can’t help but laugh.

Jack spins around to face him. “You’re getting one too,” he says, pointing at Daniel. “Don’t think you’re getting out of it.”

Daniel rolls his eyes, but accepts the red and green monstrosity that Jack hands him.

Jack leads them downstairs, and Daniel notes that the house is as extravagant decorated as always. Practically ever inch of space was filled with some sort of holiday signifiers.

Jack leads them to the living room where they all sit cross legged on the floor by the tree. His parents are also there, sitting on the couch.

“Here,” Jack says, grinning, handing each of them their presents, including the ones from Sam that they’d agreed to bring with them and open on Christmas. Daniel couldn’t help but smile back, Jack’s childish enthusiasm for the holiday was kind of infectious. Even Teal’c was smiling.

After opening presents, Sam calls and they put her on speaker. She thanks them each for their gifts, which she’d also brought home with her, and tells them what she’s been doing at home.

It’s getting close to noon when there’s a knock on the door.

“Ah,” Jack says with a grin. “Party’s here.” Daniel rolls his eyes.

Teal’c on the other hand, looks confused. “I do not understand. Is this not already the party?”

“No,” Jack says, starching the word out. “You need more people for a party. You’ll see.”

He swing the door open to reveal two familiar faces. “Jack!” The first one says. “Good to see you!”

He turns to Daniel with an unimpressed look. “Daniel,” he says. “I see your hair looks dumb as ever.”

“Kowalski,” Daniel says, deadpan. “Have you somehow gotten shorter since the last time I saw you?”

They stare at each other with serious expressions for a moment, before the other boy breaks out into a grin.

“Ah, Jackson!” He says, punching Daniel on the shoulder playfully. “Good to see ya!”

Daniel finally breaks in to a grin of his own. “Missed me?” he asks smugly.

“No, of course not,” Kowalski says with mock seriousness. Daniel laughs and gives him a one armed hug.

He turns to Teal’c, who had been watching them curiously. “Teal’c, this is Charlie Kowalski. From high school.”

“Hey,” Kowalski says cheerfully, holding out his hand to Teal’c.

“It is good to meet you,” Teal’c says, taking his arm and inclining his head. “Jack and Daniel have told me much about you.”

“Oh really,” He says, turning to Daniel with a smug grin.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Daniel says. “Only bad stuff from me.”

“I’m sure,” his friend laughs.

After that, more guests slowly trickle in. A mixture of friends form high school, Jack’s neighbours, a few people Jack knew from hockey, and family friends. Jack’s parents feed them lunch (some really nice mini sandwiches), and Jack’s music plays (which Daniel of course complains about), and he spends most of the day catching up to friends he hadn’t seen since he went away.

He’s honestly surprised by how easy it is. He talks to his friends and jokes with them as if no time had passed. It was probably silly to think things would really be different, he thinks. People don’t just change when high school ends, or when they move away. Change is a gradual thing.

Daniel pulls himself from his revelry to look for Jack, who’s off introducing Teal’c to some friends.

“Daniel,” he hears a voice from behind him.

He turns around and finds himself face to face with Shar’e. She was another friend form high school, though she was a year younger than him. They’d met while Jack and Daniel were volunteering coaching her brother’s soccer team. 

“Hey,” he says, surprised but pleased.

She smiles at him. “I was hoping you’d be here,” she says. 

“Is Skaara here too?” He asks, looking around.

“He’s around somewhere,” She says. Daniel turns back to her. “So, how is university?”

“Oh, you know,” he says, shrugging. “Same old thing. Homework, exams… ” He trails off as she laughs.

“You must be enjoying something about it,” she says. Daniel shrugs again.

“What about you?” He asks. “Been applying to colleges?”

She nods excitedly. “Yes, lots!” She looks hesitant for a moment before continuing. “I was actually thinking about going to UBC.”

“Oh,” he says, surprised for a moment. “That’s great! That’d be great!”

“Yeah?” She says, smiling again. “We could uh, hang out.”

He laughs gently. “Yeah, we could like… show you around.”

“I’m still not sure though,” she says, with exaggerated seriousness.

“Oh no, I understand,” he says, which the same tone, before they both laugh again.

Shar’e is called away by one of her friends. Daniel spots sees Teal’c in the crown, and makes his way over. On the way, he spots Skaara, who’s with two of his friends and seems to be in the process of pulling some sort or prank on Jack. For a moment he wonders if he should do something, but decides against it.

“Daniel,” Teal’c greets him as he approaches.

“Hey,” Daniel grins. “How are you liking this?”

“It had been quite enjoyable. You’re friends here are very… interesting.”

Daniel laughs at that. “Yeah, they can be something. They’re nice though, really. Even Kowalski,” he adds with a grin.

Teal’c raises an eyebrow. 

“Sorry,” he says. “We mess with each other like that. It’s just how we are.”

“Interesting,” Teal’c says. “And why do you refer to him by his last name?”

“Oh that’s kind of an inside joke,” Daniel says. “We met in ninth grade Spanish, and our teacher just called everyone by their last names.”

In fact Daniel had recognized Kowalski as one of Jack’s friends from hockey and sat next to him the first day. He’d actually been a little worried that Jack’s friends wouldn’t take to him, as Jack hadn’t at first. But the two of them had developed a dynamic almost immediately, mainly one of friendly teasing. 

“Actually, I didn’t even know his first name for a while. I kept bugging him about it, but he wouldn’t tell me till the last day of class. I even tried asking Jack, but he wouldn’t tell.”

“Interesting,” says Teal’c.

The party starts dying down in the early evening as the rest of the guests leave to be with their families. Jack puts the Charlie Brown special on as they move back and forth from the kitchen, helping his parents with dinner (mostly with cleaning as his parents rightfully didn’t trust him to cook.) Teal’c and Daniel had offered their help as well, but Jack and his parents had all but chased them out of the kitchen.

“You watch this film every year?” Teal’c asks.

“Yeah,” Daniel says. “Kind of a tradition.”

“Because it’s the best Christmas movie ever,” Jack says definitively, striding back into the living room.

“But you watch only parts of the movie,” Teal’c says.

“Oh please, he’s been watching this since he was a baby,” Daniel says, turning to Jack. “He probably knows the good thing by heart.”

“I never thought it was such a bad little tree,” Jack says perfectly in sync with the TV to prove the point. Weirdly enough, Teal’c looks impressed.

They’d finished the program and were discussing the respective merits of the muppets Christmas special (which Teal’c was actually familiar with) when Jack’s parents called them in for dinner.

As they walk into the dining room, Daniel’s hit with the familiar smells that bring him back to all the previous holidays he’d spent here. Here, where he’d often felt more at home than in his own house. With this family who’d all but taken him in as one of their own because he didn’t have much of one himself.

Here again, sharing it all with yet another friend, Daniel is filled with warmth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays to everyone, hope you have a good one!


	5. Jack 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack bonds with his friends

The combination of the flashing coloured lights and the bass vibrating through the floor has Jack a little disoriented. He tries to focus his gaze, but the rhythmic movement of the crowd naturally leads his eyes to roam around the room.

“What do you think?” Jack snaps his head up to face Daniel, who looks at him expectantly.

“What?”

“And you’re not listening,” Daniel says, looking mildly annoyed.

“Yes I am,” Jack says. An obvious lie, but in his defence he can barely hear Daniel over the music. 

Daniel rolls his eyes and turns to Teal’c, launching seamlessly back into whatever tirade he’d been on before, while Teal’c at least partly listens. Daniel, about two and a half drinks in, had gotten to the point of relentlessly rambling about whatever topic happened to come to mind. Jack knew from experience that by the time he finished the drink currently in his hand, he’d be giggling at practically anything.

In all honesty, this kind of club isn’t the first place he’d choose to spend his off time, if it were only up to him, but now that he’s here, he doesn’t mind it. The place had been recommended to them by one of Sam’s friends, and she’d just finished her last midterm today and wanted to celebrate. Of course, she’d brought the three of them with her.

Jack tunes back in just in time to hear the conclusion to whatever Daniel has been stating.

“I mean, it doesn’t make sense, right?” Daniel continues, with more intensity than is really necessary. “Why should they be assigned gender? They’re rocks? It’s bullshit, we’ll just gender anything.”

“I agree, Daniel,” says Teal’c, looking way too amused by Daniel’s ranting. “It is indeed bullshit.”

Daniel laughs so hard he almost chokes (not even finished his drink and already getting giggle). Even Jack can’t surprise an smile. Teal’c casually swearing is still a great source of amusement to the group, for some reason.

“What happened to Sam?” Jack asks, glancing around through the crowd. He hasn’t seen her for a few minutes.

“Oh, she went with Janet to get another drink,” Daniel says, pointing in a seemingly random direction.

“Anyway, my point is, we act like all this gender role stuff is natural, but in a lot of other cultures-”

Jack tunes out at this point, happy to let Daniel continue his rant. He probably won’t notice.

Jack looks around the club, taking in the crowd. The light strobes overhead for a moment, everyone’s movements seem stilted, like he’s watching it frame-by-frame. He stares for a moment, mesmerized by the movement.

It’s only when he catches a glimpse of blonde hair and a blue dress like Sam was wearing, and immediately zeroes in on the person wearing it that he realizes what he’s doing.

He shifts his gaze back to Daniel and Teal’c and makes an effort to pay attention to what Daniel is saying.

“- and in ancient Rome they didn’t have the same binary we do today,” he says, going a mile a minute. Teal’c is nodding along, but Jack’s pretty sure he’s only half listening.

“Hey,” a voice says behind them. For a moment, Jack thinks it’s Sam, and his heart jumps. It’s not Sam, though, just someone passing by.

Jack doesn’t like the implication of that, nor the implication of how he was unconsciously looking for her in the crowd earlier. He doesn’t like it one bit.

“Anyone catch the game last night?” Jack asks suddenly, trying to pivot the conversation to something he could actually contribute to, in order to distract himself.

Of course, neither of them had, but he does manage to get enough interest from Teal’c to spend the next few minutes discussing the merits of his team.

“Hey, Jack,” He hears a sing-song voice from behind him, and this time it does belong to Sam.

She appears in front of them, arm slung around Janet’s shoulders, drink in hand. Jack can’t hold back a grin, he rarely sees Sam so uninhibited.

“What’re y’all up to?” She says. Jack barely suppresses laughter.

“Jack was telling us about… hockey? I wasn’t really listening,” Daniel says.

“We -” Sam gestures emphatically between her and Janet -“were having a great time. Dancing out there.” She points vaguely towards the raised platform on the other side of the club.

“I thought you didn’t dance,” Jack asks, no longer surprising an amused grin.

“I do when I’m tonight.” She pauses for a moment, then her face lights up. “Oh, you guys should come!”

Daniel looks doubtful. “I don’t usually dance,” he says.

“Oh come on, it’s fun.”

He still doesn’t look convinced, but Sam grabs his hand, her other arm still around Janet, and drags them both off.

“You guys too,” she adds sternly, glancing over her shoulder at Jack and Teal’c.

“Not really my scene,” Jack mumbles, but follows them anyway.

Up on the floor, the flashing lights create an almost dizzying effect, and the heat of dozens of moving bodies hit’s him in full force. He can hardly hear himself think, and sections of the floor are sticky with spilled drinks. Somehow, though, Jack doesn’t mind any of it.

Teal’c, as it turns out, is quite a good dancer. Daniel is very much not. Sam, in honesty, looks like a mess, but she’s clearly having fun.

She pulls Teal’c in and they start dancing together, her arms looped over his shoulders, the way she had with Janet before. He spins around, then dips her, and she laughs with wild abandon.

She steps up to Daniel and starts doing the same thing. The two of them collide with each other several times, very uncoordinated in their inebriation, but they just laugh it off and keep going. When she pulls away, Daniel offers himself to Teal’c who, still sober, had much better luck with him than Sam had.

Then Sam comes up to Jack. He feels a moment of panic, but before he can object, she has her arms around him and has started dancing.

It’s nothing, he thinks. She was just doing this with Daniel, and Teal’c, and Janet. Completely platonic enjoyment.

Still, he can’t help but notice things. He’s acutely aware of her warmth pressing against his chest, the pressure of her hands on his sides. He can smell the sweet, flowery shampoo in her hair. He’s sure he would’ve noticed those same things if he was dancing with for example, Teal’c. Yep. Definitely. 

He also feels a rush that’s acutely familiar, and would have very obvious connotations if he’d been willing to admit it to himself. It’s just the alcohol. And the dancing. He’s just enjoying the moment, nothing more.

By the time they leave, Jack is breathless, head pounding from all the noise. He’s slowly coming down from the excitement he felt in the club. And there’s another feeling, slowly carving it’s way into his chest, no indication of going away anytime soon.

No, he doesn’t like this one bit.

\- - -

Jack is bored. It’s mid February and he’s sitting in the library, allegedly studying, though in reality he’s been aimlessly scrolling through twitter for the last hour.

Across from him are Teal’c and Daniel, who seem to be in the middle of an impromptu language lesson. Daniel had been working on learning Teal’c’s native language for the last few months, and currently seemed to be repeating the same phrase over and over with slightly different intonations, and getting commentary from Teal’c. Jack found it supremely annoying.

“Daniel,” he says. “You gonna be done with that any time soon?”

Daniel gives him an annoyed look that’s very familiar to him by now. “Jack, if you’re bored, go find something to do.”

“Maybe I will,” says Jack. He waits a moment to see what Daniel will do, but he immediately goes back to repeating the words, so Jack, who is indeed bored, packs up his stuff and heads out of the library.

He strikes off in a direction, opting to walk outside, because the weather was quite nice for February. He soon finds himself in the science building, standing in front of the physics lab. His body had led him there without his conscious permission. 

It seems that his first instinct was to go looking for Sam. That probably didn’t mean anything.

He finds her there, anyway. She seems to be working on some sort of program, or at least is typing vigorously on her laptop.

He looks over her shoulder. “Watcha working on,” he asks, and she spins around, startled. She gives him an annoyed smile when she notices him.

“Well, right now I’m trying to plot this particle data, but it keeps coming out wrong,” she says.

Jack nods along. “You almost done?”

She shrugs. “It could take a few minutes, or a few hours if I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.”

Jack throws his head back and sighs. “Everyone’s working,” he says.

She looks amused. “That’s university, Jack.”

“Yeah,” he says, bored again. Drops his bag to the ground and slinks into the seat across from her. He pulls out his phone and goes back to his aimless scrolling.

“Yes,” she exclaims, what feels to Jack like a long time later. “Got you now, you little bastard.”

Jack huffs with laughter, and she looks up like she just remembered he was still there.

“So, you’re done?”

She considers it. “Done enough.”

“Great,” he says. “Let’s get out of here, this place is giving me a headache” She laughs.

They walk casually around the campus, enjoying the fresh air. She tells him about her physics experiments and he pretends to understand what she’s talking about. He talks about his other friends and whatever he’s watching on tv. 

“Where’re Daniel and Teal’c?” she asks eventually. “I thought you were studying with them.”

Jack waves his hand dismissively. “They were being boring. We’re better off without them.” She laughs again, and he feels gratified.

“Wanna do something?” He asks. “Go somewhere, I dunno.”

“Actually,” she says, perking up slightly. “I have plans tonight.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Plans?”

She grins. “I uh, have a date.”

“Oh,” he says, trying to come up with something more intelligent. There’s a feeling settling into his chest that he does not like. “Do I… know this person?”

She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

He looks at her inquiringly, and she continues. “His name is Joe, he’s pre-law.” 

Jack gives her a suspicious look. “A future lawyer?”

She rolls her eyes. “He’s a good guy, Jack.”

“I’m sure he is,” Jack says. They walk in silence for a moment.

“Well, I’d better let you go,” Jack says eventually. “I’m sure you need to get ready for your date.”

She turns to him, momentarily fixing him with a look he can’t quite read. Then she smiles softly. 

“Yeah,” she says. “I’ll see you later.”

He waves at her as she changes direction, heading back to her dorm. He feels strangely disappointed. He was just disappointed that they weren’t gonna hang out today, that she was busy, because they were friends. Yep, that was it.

Jack sighed loudly. He walked off, looking for Daniel or Teal’c or anything else to distract himself with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long since the last updated, I've been super busy with school. The next two chapters are already written though, I just need to edit them, so they should hopefully be up faster!


	6. Vala 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another Vala and Cam chapter! sorry this one took so long, I got super busy with school, then distracted by other projects. The next chapter should be up faster, hopefully

Vala stares at the projector, bored out of her mind. She glances up at the clock and almost groans aloud when she sees there’s nearly a full hour of class left. She looks down at her notebook page, which so far contains only a title and the note ‘I hate this class’.

See, it’s not like Vala’s a bad student, generally. Sure, she went out and partied, and sure, she didn’t generally like going to class, but she pulled through.  
Her grades were pretty good, at least in the subjects she found marginally interesting.

This class though. This class is possibly the most soul-suckingly boring thing she’s ever experienced. The combination of bland statistical data combined with the absence of even the slightest hint of how any of this could be applied to anything, made it difficult to precess any of what they were supposed to be learning. Then, the completely monotonous delivery of the professor was just the cherry on top.

She just barely managed to get through their last assignment before the deadline by doing a week’s worth of work in about six hours. The pressure of the fast approaching deadlined had been almost thrilling.

Right now, though, she has no such pressure, and her attention just slides off the material like water off a duck.

It doesn’t really matter, though. She can always go over the notes later. They post everything.

She gives up on trying to wrangle her attention back to the lecture, managing to passively absorb at least some of the information on the screen. Probably less than ten percent, but she’ll take what she can get. The rest she could catch up later. Probably about two days before the midterm, but such is life.

Finally, the sweet release of 3:50pm appears on the clock, and Vala practically runs out of the room.

She meets up with Cameron on her way back to the dorms. 

“So, how was class?” He asks, with a smug grin.

Vala groans and throws her head back. “I nearly died, Cameron.”

Cam rolls his eyes. “It can’t be that bad.”

“I maintain that introductory statistics classes should be classified as a method of torture. Especially the ones taught be Dr Boring in there.”

“Drama queen,” Cam says, earning a glare from Vala. “I take it studying’s not going well so far either?”

“Studying? What studying?” She says with exaggerated obliviousness.

“Good study habits wouldn’t kill you, you know,” he says dryly.

“Ugh, I bet you’ve already started studying for midterms too,” she says. “How dull.”

Cam gives her a disbelieving look. “Of course I have. Why haven’t you.”

Vala rolls her eyes. “They don’t start till next week. I’ve never in my life studied something more than a week in advance.”

Cam gives her the same resigned look he gets whenever her study habits are discussed. “How do you do this, and still manage to have good grades?”

Vala grins cheekily. “Just my natural genius, I suppose”

Cam rolls his eyes. “Natural genius didn’t stop you from getting arrested three times.”

“Twice!” Vala says, indignant. “And only one of those times was even my fault. Anyway, my criminal record here is mostly clean now, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Cam stares at her for a moment, as if debating whether to question her about this.

“Maybe it’s cause you take so many blow-off classes,” he says, apparently deciding it’s not worth it.

“Only two,” Vala protests. “And you’d do it too, if your program wasn’t so inflexible.”

“Well, I can at least pretend to take the moral high ground,” he says. “With all those goddamn math classes I have to take, I deserve that.”

Vala rolls her eyes.“Anyway, I’m more interested in you and that Carmen girl.”

“It’s Caren,” Cam says, annoyed. “And nothing happened.”

“Not yet,” says Vala. “But with my help -”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Cam says. 

Vala pouts. “You are no fun, Cameron.”

\- - -

“Never have I ever…” Vala stares down her opponents, trying to get a read. “Had sex in a moving vehicle.”

“God,” John moans, reaching for the bottle to pour himself another shot. “How do you do that?”

“I told you playing with Vala was a bad idea,” Cam said.

John Shepherd, one of Cameron’s engineering friends, was currently sprawled across Vala’s floor with her and Cameron, all three of them quite drunk.

Vala was actually quite fond of John. He was much more open to having a good time than Cam, and was always ready to jump right into whatever half-brained idea his friends came up with, Vala included.

It had been Vala who’d suggested the game, and Cam had indeed warned his friend of the danger of playing it with Vala. She was uncannily good at guessing at people’s more, shall we say, interesting life experiences. It was a gift.

John, not one to back down from a challenge, had disregarded the warning. If they were keeping score, Vala would be far in the lead. 

“Are you sure it’s not to late to turn this into a game of strip never have I ever?” She asks, earning her a glare form Cam and a bewildered look from John.

“My turn,” Cam says, a little forcefully. “Never have I ever been arrested.”

Vala shrugs and takes a shot.

“Cam, come of, you’re killing me,” John says. Vala raises an eyebrow.

“When have you been arrested?” Cam gawks.

John narrows his eyes. “That’s not important. The important thing is,” he flips the bottle in his hand upside down to emphasize his point. “We’re out.”

Vala hums appraisingly. “I’m sure I have another bottle around here somewhere…”

“You know,” John says, starting to stand. “I think we’ve had enough.” He stands up, and sways slightly. “Yeah, definitely done that. I should probably, uh, sleep.”

He moves towards the door.

“Aw come on, stay a little longer, it’s only -” Vala glances at her phone. “2:16 am.”

John gives her another disbelieving look. He seemed to do that a lot. 

“It’s not even a school night, you an sleep in as long as you want.” John looks skeptical, but nonetheless turns away from the door, falling down onto Vala’s bed.

“Just to be clear, I’m not drinking any more,” he says emphatically.

“That’s okay,” Vala says. “We’ll just find something else to do.”

Vala climbs up onto the bed next to him, while Cam seems happy to stay on the floor.

“You should drink some water,” he says. “Alcohol makes you dehydrated.”

Vala rolls her eyes. “Okay, mom.” Cameron scoffs.

Vala glances out the open window. The sound of sirens drifts through as a police car passes in the distance.

“Would you come bail me out of jail?” Vala asks, lazily. Cameron doesn’t bother to look up from where he’s lying on the floor.

“I doubt it,” he says. Vala makes an offended sound, but Cam he cut’s her off. “If you were in jail, like 90% chance I’d be there too.”

“Huh,” she says, feeling oddly touched. “That’s very sweet, Cameron.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be,” he grumbles. “You’re gonna get me killed one day.”

Vala ignores him and turns to her other companion. “What about you, John Sheppard?”

“What?” John says, looking up from his phone with a blank expression.

“What are you looking at?” Vala asks, snatching the phone out of his hands.

“Hey,” John protests, but makes no real attempt to get it back. That probably meant there was nothing interesting to see, but that doesn’t stop Vala from looking.

She flips through his snapchat. “Oh, who are they?” On the screen is a tall muscular man who is, quite frankly, gorgeous, and a shorter, but still fit, woman with light brown hair, equally gorgeous. 

John glances over her shoulder at the screen. “s’are my friends. The big guy’s Ronan, the girl’s Telya.”

“This Ronan fellow… he’s very attractive.”

John hums in agreement. 

“You should introduce us sometime,” Vala says, grinning.

John looks dubious. “They’d probably like you. I’m not sure I’d trust you together though.”

“Excuse me, I’m nothing if not trustworthy.”

“Ha!” Cam says from the floor.

“You shut up,” she says, throwing a pillow at him.

John laughs and takes his phone back from Vala. “I’ll introduce you sometime,” he says. “Probably. They’re with me like all the time. Should be easy.”

He falls back on her bed, laying with his legs dangling off the side. “You should meet Rodney too, that’d be funny.”

She hears Cameron giggling.

“Why?” She asks. “Who’s Rodney?”

“Nother friend,” John says. “He can be a little, you know, annoying.”

Vala starts laughing again. “I bet I could annoy him worse than he could annoy me.”

“You definitely could, and I’d love to see it,” John says.

“You’re a weird dude, you know that?” Vala says.

“Oh, coming from you, that’s rich,” Cam says.

“So rude,” Vala scoffs. John is laughing again. 

“You guys are fun,” John says. “My friends are fun. Everybody’s fun.”

Vala grins. “You do seem tired, actually. Maybe you should -”

“No way,” John mumbles. “I could stay awake all night.

He’s asleep ten minutes later, spread out across the foot of her bed. Cam is asleep on her floor, too, against the pillow she threw at him earlier, and Vala curled up on the rest of her bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing Atlantis squad, finally. This chapters a little shorter & less polished than the others, but tbh I found it a little harder to write Vala's POV than the others, even though I love her. Anyway, next and last chapter coming soon (hopefully)


	7. Daniel 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang reaches the end of their first year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of exposition and waffling about life and change in this one, sorry. I probably could've found a way to incorporate that more organically, but who has the time.

Daniel stares out the window. Its a beautiful day, he can see a light breeze rustling the fresh leaves on the oak tree outside. There’s a bird milling about one of the higher branches, it looked like it was singing. Daniel couldn’t hear from inside.

He pulled his eyes away, trying to shift his attention back to the exam in front of him. It was his last one, an English. He had two essays to write, he was nearly done the second one, if only he could concentrate.

He glanced up at the clock. Only half an hour left. Most of his classmates had already finished and left. 

Daniel stares down at the paper, suppressing the urge to groan with frustration. He rereads the last sentence he wrote, almost begging himself to just focus. One more paragraph to write, then a conclusion, then he can leave.

He takes a calming breath, and musters all of his remaining will power. He manages to push through the rest of his essay, feeling a slight sense of satisfaction at the finished product. He tosses his pencil onto his desk triumphantly.

He knows he should read over the essay for mistakes, but he just can’t bring himself to look at it any longer. He hands in his exam paper and practically runs out the door.

He steps outside, taking in the sun and the fresh spring air. Freedom at last. He wanders around the campus for a while, letting himself enjoy the beautiful late-April weather. He knows he has to go back to his dorm soon, as he still has a lot of stuff to pack before he leaves tomorrow, but that’s a problem that can wait until later.

He finds Sam, Jack and Teal’c sitting out in the grass, in a field by the residence buildings. When he approaches, Jack grabs him by the arm and yanks him down next to them. Daniel glares, but Jack just smirks at him.

“You’re done your last final?” Jack asks.

“Yep. Easy, ” he grins.

“We’re all done then. We should celebrate!”

“How about we celebrate by packing,” Sam says flatly.

“We can do that later,” Jack says with a dismissive wave.

“We are leaving tomorrow,” Teal’c says, giving Jack a dubious look.

“See, plenty of time!” Jack’s response is met with three sets of unimpressed stares. He rolls his eyes, but capitulates. “”Ugh, you guys are no fun.”

Daniel pauses for a moment. “What if we all packed together?” Which was probably a bad idea, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave their company right now.

Sam turns to him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, we all go to one person’s room, pack everything up, then move on to the next room.”

Jack brightens at the thought. “Oh, I like that.”

Sam frowns. “I’m not sure how productive that’ll be.”

“Nonsense! If we work together, it’ll get done faster.”

Teal’c opens his mouth as if to contradict Jack, but seems to decide against it. Instead, he nods.

Sam still doesn’t seem fully convinced, but capitulates to their pleading stars. “Fine, but if we don’t get done packing on time, I’m blaming you.”

They start in Teal’c’s room, and manage to pack everything up with surprising efficiency under Sam’s direction. When they move on to Jack’s room, things devolve. They take a break early on, Jack offers them drinks, and Daniel unwisely takes them, as does Sam.

By the time they move on to Sam’s room, both of them are slightly, just a little bit, totally, drunk.

“Wow,” Sam says, looking up from where she’d been taping a box shut. “We’re really done our first year. Can you believe that?”

“Dude,” Says Daniel, looking up form where he’s sitting on the floor. His productivity has been severely hampered as he finds every new object inexplicably interesting, and has been working on the same box for nearly half an hour. “We’re like… 25% done university, do you realize that?”

“Could be less,” Jack says cheerfully. “Lots of people take more than four years.”

“That is so true,” Sam drawls. “There’s nothing wrong with taking a little more time. You still end up in the same place, you know?”

Daniel glances over at Teal’c, who seems vaguely amused by their discussion. “What about you, Teal’c? How do you feel about all this?”

Teal’c raises an eyebrow, and looks like he’s considering a response, before he’s cut off by Sam.

“Man, I can’t believe we’re really going away tomorrow,” she says. “I’m not gonna see you for like, four months.”

Daniel feels a rush of emotion. “Aw, I’m gonna miss you guys,” he says. “Except Jack. Jack’s coming with me.”

“I, too, will miss your company,” Teal’c says.

“Come on guys, we’ll see each other all the time next year. We’ll even be living together,” Jack says. Then, under the weight of Daniel and Sam’s combined puppy eyes, he sighs. “Aw, c’mere.”

They all converge around Daniel’s position on the floor, and end up in an awkward group hug. The position is uncomfortable, but Daniel doesn’t mind.

“I really love you guys,” he says.

Jack laughs a little. “You are so drunk.”

“Shut up!” Daniel shoves him, breaking up the group.

“It’s alright,” Sam says, ruffling his hair. “You’re nice when you’re drunk.”

Jack rolls his eyes., “Come on kids, we’d better finish up this packing. Sam’s gonna kill us if we don’t get done.”

\- - -

They do end up getting everything packed, working late into the night. By the time they finish, they’re so tired they all end up crashing in Teal’c’s room, in amongst the boxes and bags.

In the morning, they move their larger possessions into a storage unit where it will stay for the summer. They drop Sam and Teal’c off at the airport with hugs and heartfelt goodbyes. From there, the go straight to the highway and drive off towards the town he’d called home for the last seven years.

The drive is familiar, the same route they took here in the fall, and back home in the winter. Everything’s greener now, and the view of the mountains is beautiful.

The stop for lunch at a McDonalds in a town Daniel’s never heard of before, then struggle to make their way back to the highway despite the GPS. 

By the time they get home, it’s early evening. The sun is starting to set behind the mountains, and the sky is painted pink and orange. Daniel gets a weird feeling as they drive back into his neighbourhood. It feels so familiar, but distant. 

Jack stops in front of his house. “Thanks for the ride,” Daniel says wryly.

“No problem,” Jack says, patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you around, yeah?” Daniel nods and climbs out of the car.

He waves Jack off as he drives away. He stands outside his front yard, staring at his house. It looked remarkably the same as it had the last time he’d been there. That was nearly a year ago, now. 

He walks up the driveway, like he has a million times before. He climbs up the steps, stands on the porch, and slides his key in. It sticks a little, just like it always has.

The house is empty, he knows his grandfather is away for work until tomorrow. He said he was sorry he couldn’t be there. He makes his way up to his bedroom.

It’s almost surreal, being back after so long away. He remembers the last time he stood here, getting ready to leave for university. Now that he’s back, it feels simultaneously like it was a lifetime ago, an like it was just yesterday. He thought it would feel different, being back after all this time, but the surprising thing is how familiar it is. How effortlessly he slips into the same routine he had when he last lived here. Now his other life, away at university, feels distant.

He lies down on his old bed, staring up. There are star patterns painted on the ceiling. He remembers painting them in a haze of frenzied energy one day when he was fourteen. He hadn’t planned ahead and splattered paint on his carpet and bedsheets, but it was worth it.

They meant something, those stars. He’d painted them there after his grandfather had told him they would be staying here, in this town, that they wouldn’t be moving somewhere new in a few months as they always had since his parents died. They meant permanence, building something here that would actually last. 

For the first time in nearly a year, Daniel falls asleep in a comfortable bed. 

\- - -

They decide to visit their old high school. It’s late May, they’ve been home a few weeks. Daniel’s settling into the warmth and familiarity, wasting his days with old friends.

They’re splayed across a couch in Kowalski’s basement, half watching []reruns and talking right through them, when Jack offers up the idea.

They have nothing better to do, so soon enough they’re all standing in the building where they’d spent four years.

It was a little weird, walking through these halls now. It feels intensely familiar, but at the same time it’s distant. He could feel that he didn’t belong here anymore. 

“Oh,” Jack says, excited. “We should go see Mrs Langford!”

Daniel grins at the thought. Catherine Langford was been his favourite teacher in high school by far. She was the only teacher who actually seemed to care about him. Most had dismissed him as careless or difficult, but she tried to find what he was having problems with, and encouraged him to find better ways of dealing with them.

Knowing him now, anyone might be surprised to hear it, but Daniel had actually been a very difficultly student when he was young. Despite his academic inclinations, which had been clear even in preschool, he had’t fared especially well in school.

When he was younger, he got in trouble for “speaking out of turn” which, as far as young Daniel could figure, meant “asking questions the teacher didn’t like”. 

He also had a tendency to occasionally not get along well with his fellow students. While the ones he happened to make friends with always ended up adopting him like a brother, the general population of the school was not. This was mainly due to his moral convictions, oddly strong for someone his age, and his downright refusal to back down when he felt he was right. This had indeed led to physical fights on more than one occasion.

On top of all that, he also tended to stop paying attention when he wasn’t interested in what a teacher was saying. Sure, most kids did that, but few of them did it as well as Daniel. In third grade, he’d gotten in trouble at least five separate times for playing Pokemon under his desk during class. He tried to explain that he’d already finished the assigned reading, and that the way the teacher was explaining it didn’t make any sense anyway, and it was boring, but all he’d gotten was his games taken away.  
He got better at adapting as he got older. He learned that sometimes it was easier to just agree with your teachers and leave it alone. And, of course, losing his parents and then being completely uprooted had left him a lot less willing to start confrontations with his pears, especially when he was in middle school and they got significantly meaner. He stopped playing games in class and at least pretended to be paying attention, for all the good it did him. 

Throughout high school, his disposition had slowly changed, he was pretty sure it was mostly because of Catherine Langford and her attention. There was Jack too, of course, but that was a different story.

Mrs Langford practically lights up when they enter her classroom.

“Daniel! Jack! It’s so good to see you!” She stands up from her desk and hugs each of them in turn. Daniel grins.

“How’ve you boys been? University treating you well?”

“It’s been pretty good,” Daniel says. “I really like my program.”

She smiled broadly at him. “I thought you would. You always had a knack for it.”

“I’m good, too,” Jack says. She laughs.

They talk for a long while, about university, about their new friends, about the old high school days. She tells them she’s proud of them, and Daniel practically glows. He remembers all the days he’d spent in her classroom, all the times she’d helped him understand something. He remembers shaking her hand as he walked across the stage at his graduation.

“Thank you, Mrs Langford,” he says. “For everything.”

She smiles at him again. “It was nothing, Daniel. You were always one of my favourite students.”

\- - -

Daniel leans back against Jack’s fence, staring out into the mountains beyond. He always loved Jack’s yard, how it almost spilled out into the forest, save the fences.

“Remember when we camped out here?” He asks, his mind wandering.

“We did that lots of times,” Jack says.

“The night before we started high school.”

Jack smiles a little. “Yeah.”

Daniel was nervous, no matter how much he told himself it wasn’t a big deal. Jack knew he was home alone, his grandfather away at yet another conference, so invited him over. They pitched a tent in the backyard, Jack’s parents made them hot dogs.

Daniel remembers staring up at the night sky, lost in his fears about the future.

“Do you think it’ll be different?” He asked.

“What do you mean?” Jack asked.

“I dunno. Everything.”

Jack just shrugged. “Not the important stuff.”

Jack has a way of casually reassuring people without letting on. He acts like he doesn’t notice you’re upset or worried, then somehow says exactly what you need to hear. 

Daniel stares into the forest, and thinks about Jack O’Neill.

Daniel was seven when his parents died, and he moved in with his grandfather. He moved around a lot for work, Daniel didn’t have any stability for years. They would move somewhere new, and as soon as he started to make friends and feel at home, he would be uprooted and have to start over somewhere else.

By the time he was eleven years old, he’d stopped trying. He had no interest in making friends, only to leave them yet again. When he moved here, he was sullen and hostile and very lonely. He expected this to just be another stop, another place he would leave without any real connection.

But then there was Jack. He was loud and brash and funny, and everyone liked him. Daniel didn’t. That didn’t stop him though. No matter how much Daniel tried to push him away, Jack kept talking to him and needling him and being nice to him. He wore his way through Daniel’s defences. It was the first time in years that Daniel had felt a deep, genuine connection with another human being.

“You changed my life, you know,” Daniel says absently. Jack turns to look at him. “I don’t know where I’d be right now if it hadn’t been for you.”

Jack shuffles awkwardly. “It was nothing, Daniel.”

“No it wasn’t,” Daniel says. “Really. Thank you.”

Jack spins his phone in his hand. After a long moment of silence, he speaks up again. “It wasn’t charity or anything.”

Daniel frowns. “What?”

“I mean, I just wanna say,” he takes a deep breath. “You changed me too. So. Thanks.”

Daniel smiles at the ground.

\- - -

Sam comes to visit towards the end. Her dad drops her off, suitcases in hand, in front of Jack’s house, two weeks before the new year. She says goodbye to her family as Jack and Daniel wait for her by the door.

As soon as the car drives off, she ran over and tackles Daniel into a hug.

“Hey,” he says, muffled by her hair. She pulls back and holds him at arms length.

“You’re hair’s longer,” she says. 

He shrugs. “So’s yours.”  
She turns to Jack, giving him a hug too. “I missed you guys.”

“We missed you too,” Daniel says, grinning.

Jack rolls his eyes. “You two are so sappy.” Sam punches his shoulder.

They spend the next few days showing her around their town, introducing her to their friends. They show her all the best trails through the mountain, all the best views. She seems to think the place is beautiful. 

Teal’c visits the next week. He caught a flight to the nearest airport, and Jack drove the three of them over to pick him up. They plan to drive up to university together, from here.

They show Teal’c around, just like they did Sam. It’s a little weird at first, having them here in his hometown. Like worlds colliding.

The more time they spend there, though, the more it feels right. He feels at home with them, as much as he ever felt at home here. 

This town represented something for him. It was stability, belonging, security. If he was honest, though, he mostly felt like that was because this was where he met Jack, and his other friends. This was where he’d formed connections to people, where he’d found people he really cared about, and who cared about him.

Place was incidental, Daniel had realized. Home wasn’t a place. Home was people. Right now, these people, Jack and Sam and Teal’c, they were home.

It’s the first of September, and it’s time to drive back to Vancouver.

The four of them climb into Jack’s car together. Teal’c rides shotgun, Daniel sits in the back with Sam.

They talk, they bicker about who’s music to listen to, they joke about names of towns they pass. Daniel’s hometown recedes behind them, and they move forward towards the next year. This time, Daniel’s not nervous. With them beside him, he knows everything will be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, it's finally done. It's been so long since I started writing this it's crazy. Anyway, if you liked this, I have a sequel planned, which involves Jonas being here and the whole gang meeting each other. Fun fact, Jonas meeting the squad was actually the first bit I came up with, but then I wanted to write about how these four met and became friends, so I started a prequel which eventually became way longer than expected. I'm also thinking of doing a spinoff with the Atlantis squad in this universe, if anyone's interested in that. Anyway, thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed some part of this.


End file.
